Do NFC cards store personal data on the chip?
URL-based NFC business cards store only a short URL on the chip — not your personal data. Your name, phone, email, and other contact details are on the profile page the URL points to, not embedded in the chip. Some older or DIY setups store a vCard directly on the chip, which does contain personal data.
URL approach: data on the profile, not the chip
Most professional NFC business card platforms use the URL approach: the chip stores a link, your info lives on a server. Advantages: you can update your info without replacing the card, there's no storage limitation, and the chip doesn't contain any personal data that could be read directly. The chip is essentially a pointer.
vCard approach: data on the chip
An older approach encodes a vCard (contact file) directly on the chip. The chip then contains your name, phone, email, etc. This works offline (no internet needed to load the profile) but has significant limitations: you can't update the info without re-encoding the chip, storage is limited to the chip size (max 888 bytes for NTAG216), and photos generally don't fit.
Is my data at risk if someone reads the chip?
For URL-based cards: they get a public URL. For vCard-on-chip cards: they get your contact info — the same info you'd put on a paper card.
Can I tell which approach my NFC card uses?
With an NFC writer app, you can read your own chip. If you see a URL, it's URL-based. If you see name/phone/email fields, it's a vCard-on-chip setup.
Which approach is more private?
URL-based is more controlled — you decide what appears on the profile and can change it. vCard-on-chip is fixed once encoded.